What was the message that the Magic were trying to send last night? Orlando fouled Dwight Howard purposefully so many times. They weren't even pretending that Hack A Howard wasn't their main strategy. Howard made 25 of 39 free throws, making 64% of his free throws last night. Orlando clearly went out of their way to foul him, Hack A Dwight, as much as possible. The strategy started out okay as he missed 10 of 19 free throws he shot in the first half. In the second half he made 16 of 20 free throws. Many of the fouls were ridiculously intentional. Good news for the Lakers that Howard was "on fire" from the free throw line last night. That raises his season free throw shooting percentage to. 490% for the season. $19.5 million just doesn't buy what it use to. (Thanks to espn.com.)
I'm not sure what the message was that the Magic was trying to deliver last night, but they were clearly trying to humiliate Howard. Surprisingly Howard, a notoriously bad free throw shooter, came through. He shot so well that the Magic's strategy backfired. Although the Lakers have won 8 of their last 10 games they are still in 8th place in the Western Conference. The Lakers are enjoying a little success before they get exposed and sent back to reality in the playoffs.
Yes, Howard had a good game last night, but ESPN used the word "dominates" to describe his performance. I don't know if he quite dominated. He made slightly over 50% of his field goal attempts and only scored so many points because he was fouled so many times. Let's not hype up Howard please.
The Heat continue to make the Eastern Conference a laugher as they rolled to their 19th straight win last night. How many games will they win before they finally lose. It seems that they are peaking at the right time, but it could be too early.
Two NBA games on ESPN tonight. The first one, Utah @ Oklahoma City, you can skip. As a Jazz fan I'd consider that game a success if the Jazz lose by 20 points or less. Then the second game will be much more intriguing. The New York Knicks, one of the Eastern Conference dwarves, will be visiting the speedy Nuggets of Denver. From an aesthetic viewpoint this won't be an especially pretty game. However from the viewpoint of someone who hates the overrated Knicks, I look forward to the Knicks getting their butts handed to them again. Can the Knicks score more than 63 points this game? #whyallthehypefortheKnicks?
I'm getting so very excited as March Madness is only 8 days away, the three most exciting weeks of the sports year. The NFL playoffs are great, but are only a few games. The NFL playoffs culminates in the Super Bowl but it's only one game. The NBA playoffs are a two month slog, way too long. Too many teams make the NBA playoffs that are clearly have no chance of winning the NBA title. Also in the NBA playoffs a team can lose 3 games each series and still win the NBA title!
For me March Madness is where it's at in terms of excitement. Another great thing about the NCAA Tournament is the one and done aspect of it. That aspect makes it much more likely for crazy things to happen, it's those crazy things that make it March Madness. I always look forward to March Madness every year.
Also this March Madness should be a little more special for me than usual as I'll actually be able to participate in it. I'm going to be a volunteer on Thursday, March 21st and Saturday, March 23rd helping with the tournament through the University of Utah. This year the second round of the NCAAs will be held in Salt Lake. (Officially it's called the second round, following what's called the First Four. The First Four is where the #65 to #68 teams play each other to determine where they'll be in the actual traditional brackets that everyone is used to.) I'm looking forward to being near to all that excitement and energy.
Also thumbs up to the USA World Baseball Classic team, they won again last night. They beat Puerto Rico 7-1 in what I expected to be a much tougher game than it ended up being. I thought that Puerto Rico had a good chance of beating the Americans. I'm even more worried about the USA's next opponent. That would be the Dominican Republic, they've been steamrolling teams in this tournament. The DR were down 4 runs last night, before coming back to win 5-4. (I'm surprised how little information there is on the Internet about the WBC.)
I also just want to say one thing about the USA's WBC jerseys, they are extremely good looking. I believe back in the day they would have been called fly:
themusicaddict
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